Peace Comes to Second Life… Really?!?

Well, for about a minute… when all the guns in Second Life broke… Now, there are work around steps and viewer fixes and… Whatever, you can again shoot those deserving of annihilation.

So, what happened? Why can’t I shoot that scumbag werewolf and save the hot mini-skirted damsel? Seems the Lindens fixed a problem in the process of building Horizons, that’s my thinking. As they expanded controls for use with Advanced Experience Tools (AET), Horizons is an advanced experience, the scripting functions needed a bit more control. So, as reported some time ago we got new SIT commands. See: Second Life News 2016 w45 and for more details Scripting.

Fallout Wasteland - liqueur.felix

Fallout Wasteland – liqueur.felix

I suspect somewhere in that process the Lindens noticed some REALLY OLD bugs, think beginning of SL time, which are now just oddities for most scripters and fixed them to make it easier (and likely make it more logically correct) to do Horizons. The result is all the weapons designed to deal with those bugs/oddities broke.

The heart of the problem seems to be SVC-7532llTakeControls(*,FALSE,TRUE) prevents left clicks from mouselook. (2009) In most combat games in SL one shifts to mouselook to fight-shoot. How the viewer handles your mouse movement, keys, and clicks changes in mouselook is the problem. I only sort of understand what is happening. So, no great detail from me. I just know that the mouse movement, key, and click information has to pass through the viewer and get to the attachments. The gun has to get the trigger pull signal.

But, the same trigger pull also has meaning for the SL system. The two places the information is needed create a conflict. How does the system know if you are pulling a trigger or if you are aimed at a door, you are clicking on the door to open it? Scripters apparently worked that out.

There are more details about the problems, which the JIRA describes.

BUG-37693Recent changes on how llTakeControls and CONTROL_ML_LBUTTON react breaks lots of old content. (Aug 2016)

Starting with viewer version 4.0.2 all combat related things… meaning anything that requires knowledge of your clicks and keys while in mouselook… is broken.

Discussion in the JIRA gets into what all is broken and what still works, but all see this as a huge problem as it breaks content in SL made from 2004 to mid 2016. Many earlier builders of the content are no longer still active in SL but their products are in use. So, users are heavily impacted without a chance of having their products repaired/updated.

So, what about removing the Linden fix for SVC-7532? Just revert back? The HORIZINS wall is in the way of that fix. The new Linden’s experience Horizons depends on the fix. It is in the Forest Quest. The gun there depends on the fix.

Of course, the suggestion has been made to reprogram that gun and revert 7532. But, changing the viewer, reprogramming the gun, getting users updated and doing it without interrupting the Lab’s major promotion of Horizons… no simple thing.

As it is now the Linden viewer and Horizons work. So, if you want to play in Horizons, use the Linden made viewer. You can see the Lindens have lots of incentive to avoid a change and save face.

Firestorm developers saw the problem. Lots of screaming from combat players, Gor players, fliers, boaters… So, the team removed the 7532 fix from the Firestorm viewer. Other third party viewers are doing the same and a few are building kludgy code to work around the problem. (That isn’t a comment about how they are writing their code, which may be elegant.) So, if you need to sate your blood lust with existing rapid fire weapons, use a third-party viewer.

The Lindens have yet to decide what to do; break decades of content, fix an old problem and clean up the system, revamp the system to something that works better and handles legacy content… sort of like the Bento upgrade…

I think it will take some time for the decision to be made. The obvious fix is uncomfortable for the Lindens. In the meantime, there are work-around-steps: pick your viewer based on your immediate planned use. To play in combat and Horizons you will have to have two viewers. However, Alchemy users, I think it is Alchemy, may find a fix allowing its use in both places.

2 thoughts on “Peace Comes to Second Life… Really?!?

  1. Pingback: Second Life Third Party Dev Meeting 2016 w46 | Nalates' Things & StuffNalates’ Things & Stuff

  2. They should just keep the fix and not change anything.

    If you build objects or scripts based on a bug, you accept the fact that if the bug is fixed, all your stuff is going to break. Same with invisiprims. They were never intended. They were clearly a bug from the very beginning.

    Broken legacy content is just that. Legacy content and it’s broken. LL will lose any left credibility if they pull a 180 on this one. At some point LL has to show some balls and fix their broken shit even if it means breaking content that was build based on that broken stuff. It’s not LL’s fault, it’s the content creators responsibility to make sure their stuff works, if they base it on a bug, they base it on a temporary situation that could change at any moment, it’s full on their fault if it breaks.

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